[Ethnocomm] e-seminar

[Trudy Milburn]

Like others who’ve posted to this forum, I’m very excited to have the
technological means to interact with EC scholars outside of our typical f2f
conferences (btw, a save-the-date for 2017 is coming soon).



Having been inspired by the inclusion of references in these posts about
past and present EC scholarship, I wanted to remind folks that over the
past year and a half several of us undertook an effort to compile some
current research about digital and/or mediated uses and extensions of EC in
the volume: *Communicating User Experience
<https://rowman.com/ISBN/9781498506137/Communicating-User-Experience-Applying-Local-Strategies-Research-to-Digital-Media-Design>*.
It includes research conducted within a variety of mediated settings/scenes
and addresses some of the issues raised in this forum.  For instance, to
address Katriel’s call for further applications of encoding, I want to
point out one of the most relevant chapters that does this very thing.
Tabitha Hart explicitly uses speech codes theory to explore the problems
that occurred for users (and trainers) of an online platform for language
learning.  What she found were four categories of *procedural knowledge*
that seemed to be at the root of many of the problems.  To partially quote
her findings, these included:

1)     Initiation and participation procedures

2)     Navigation procedures

3)     Task procedures

4)     Troubleshooting procedures (Hart, 2015, p.48)

These findings were assembled through a systematic EC analysis of the act
sequences within the interactions.  Furthermore, her conclusion echoes many
of the comments here, including that many of these types of procedural
knowledge *develop over time*.



Several other threads from Leeds-Hurwitz’s response also run throughout
this volume, including a focus on *internationalization* (especially in
Poutiainen and Sandel & Ju’s articles about cell phone use in Finland and
Macau respectively).  In another chapter, Katie Peters discusses the
difference *location* makes when some meeting participants are engaged
remotely (echoing some of the ideas raised by Lydia Reinig in this forum).



Despite Gerry Philipsen’s optimism for moving forward, I’d like to raise a
cautionary flag based on some additional questions that we grapple with
when we seek to expand EC.  Some of these limitations are artificial and
constructed by other disciplines who do not want us to encroach on their
territory, others are self-defined. I offer them in the spirit of moving
forward:



1) The use of a variety of other terms than EC in our studies.

When we describe our research methods as *speech codes theory*, *cultural
discourse analysis*, and *local strategies research*, to name a few,
scholars outside EC may not recognize the centrality of EC and the
relationship between these different branches (to continue the tree
metaphor).

2) Relegating EC to a method for data collection (as opposed to a theory or
method for data analysis)

This perception may be due to the relative absence of explicit mention of
Hymes’ categories. In fact, recently I discovered that these categories are
still considered a relatively “new” way to view certain contexts (Kalou &
Sadler-Smith, 2015).

In addition, EC scholars’ use of other analytic tools in their research
reports (i.e. speech acts, genres, and conversational sequencing/CA) may
contribute to confusion about a central set of analytic tools.

3) The issue of how EC scholars demarcate the context they are examining

As Leeds-Hurwitz mentioned in her response, Hymes’ term *speech community*
has become loosely coupled from the practices we study (and in fact, this
term is seldom used within the field of communication any more).
Overlapping boundaries make it more difficult to pin-down specific norms
for interaction since there are multiple settings, scenes and participants
in any given interaction (and this may also become a challenge for those
who have to gain IRB approval for their research).

4)     A movement towards applied studies and designed interactions

Stemming from what Katriel & Leeds-Hurwitz have both described, I’d like to
describe a trend I’ve noticed that moves from simply applying a theory or
methods to new practices.  The so-called “maker-movement” is elevating
agency to new levels.  It seems to suggest that students, researchers, and
other participants all come to consider themselves as *designers*.  This
transformation from observation to creation pushes the theoretical
boundaries of social construction to ask us to consider how new objects and
processes are initiated and EC scholars’ role in those creative endeavors.



One project that comes to mind is how becoming a researcher in a nascent
organization (or start-up) illustrates the complex roles that a
participant-observer plays in creating that organization’s structure and
norms.  Other examples include our role as instructors, designing learning
interactions in our classrooms, and especially when we teach online (see
the chapter, “Taking the *collegial* out of educational communication:
Tracking change in organizational culture with the introduction of a new
instrument for communication” in Wilkins & Wolf, 2014; and Mackenzie &
Wallace’s, 2015, discussion of online intercultural training).



References



Hart, T. (2015). Analyzing procedure to make sense of users’
(inter)actions: A case study on applying the ethnography of communication
for interaction design purposes. In T. Milburn (Ed.), *Communicating User
Experience: Applying Local Strategies Research to Digital Media Design*.
Lanham, MD: Lexington Books.



Kalou, Z. & Sadler-Smith, E. (Oct. 2015). Using ethnography of
communication in organizational research. *Organizational Research Methods*,
18 (4), 629-655. doi: 10.1177/1094428115590662



Wilkins, R. & Wolf, K. (2014). *Culture in Rhetoric*. Series: Language as
Social Action - Volume 19. New York, NY: Peter Lang.
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